1) Republicans Throw a $656 Million Retirement Party for Richard Shelby - and That’s YOUR Money They Are Spending
It's hard to make sense of the baffling decision by Senate Republicans to negotiate a spending deal with the outgoing House Democratic majority.
Our senate sources tell us Republicans are agreeing to the fire hose of federal spending as a “retirement gift” to Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, who has served for decades in the Congress. Shelby receives some $650 million in bacon slabs for the state of Alabama. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to simply build him a bronze statue? We have here what might be the most expensive “going away” present in American history.
The overall pork in the bill is reportedly $16 billion -- being used to buy votes for $1.7 trillion in spending. So less than 0.1% of the spending total greases the skids for a massive Democratic spending bill. The late Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma used to call earmarks “the gateway drug to trillion dollar spending bills." This omnibus budget bill is proving him right.
2) Blame it on Global Warming
Why is it that when a hurricane pounds Florida, or forest fires burn hundreds of thousands of acres of trees in California, this is said to be scientific evidence of manmade global warming? But the severe early-winter blizzards that have battered the western states with in some cases four feet of snow and and severe freezing temperatures, we are told blizzards are just normal events.
3) A $22 Minimum Wage for California?
We used to joke about politicians some day raising the minimum wage to $20 to $25 an hour and now Gavin Newsom and the economic midgets in Sacramento, Calif are proposing just that.
Newsom & Co. are now pushing the FAST Act - which would empower an unelected 10-member council to set wages, benefits and working conditions at most fast-food restaurants. The council would be able to raise the state’s minimum wage to as high as $22 an hour without any legislative action - a clear evasion of accountability.
The Save Local Restaurants Coalition has just turned in over a million signatures that after they're verified will prevent the law from taking effect until an upcoming referendum.
This will mean higher prices and lost jobs for low-income Californians. How does this help the poor?
4) NYC Mayor Says Stop Bashing the Rich
Kudos to NYC Mayor Eric Adams for scolding the progressives to stop chasing taxpayers out of the Big Apple. Adams will never be confused as a radical free market, pro-business mayor, but he does have basic common sense, as you can see from the video.
New York City alone has lost 300,000 people since 2020, according to Census Bureau data, and the rich are the first in line to leave.
The NYC budget office shows a dramatic 10 percent drop in taxpayers who made over $750,000, and 6 percent of those with incomes between $150,000 and $750,000. Many of those departed after New York State raised taxes by $4 billion in 2021, creating the highest state and local tax rate in the nation.
Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City notes the top 1 percent of New York City taxpayers accounted for 45 percent of the city’s total income tax liability in 2020.
Last week, the leftist “Invest in Our New York” coalition demanded Governor Kathy Hochul raise income taxes on the top 5 percent of earners, create a new state inheritance tax, and establish a “mark-to-market” tax on passive investment income like dividends.
Here’s hoping that Mayor Adams and other reasonable voices in the state can stop this madness.
5) CNN Report Confirms Donald Trump/Operation Warp Speed Saved Three Million Lives
Covid-19 vaccines have saved more than 3 million lives in US, study says
We think this estimate is WAY too high. But anywhere above one million lives saved is a miracle. This is one of the great life-saving achievements of the last half-century.
Thank you, Donald Trump, right? And thank God for those heroes in the Trump Admin who made Operation Warp Speed possible. Lest we forget, the naysayers at the CDC, the FDA, the New York Times and on and on, ridiculed Trump for promising to get a vaccine developed in nine months. The “experts” said it would take at least three years.
But WAIT! CNN never mentioned Trump and never mentioned Operation Warp Speed. Not once. Neither did the authors of the study for the Commonwealth Fund. Has there ever been clearer evidence of the anti-Trump derangement of the media than this?
To not credit Trump would be like trumpeting the polio vaccine and not mentioning Jonas Salk.
